MBA50 US B-school Social Media Ranking 2013

Matt Symonds, September 30, 2013

How good are business schools at engaging their audience through Twitter, Facebook and other social media?

The results of the MBA50 Business Schools Social Media Ranking 2013 show Harvard Business School leading the way on Facebook and Linkedin, and Stanford GSB attracting the biggest following on Twitter and You Tube. These two schools are significantly ahead of other leading US business schools, while the difference between the top 5 and the top 25 is striking, even when you factor in respective MBA class size. And neither Harvard nor Stanford offer undergraduate business courses, further reinforcing their impressive social media performance.

Below are the results of the MBA50 US B-School Social Media Ranking 2013 for Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, and YouTube:

Business School

Twitter

FaceBook

Linkedin

YouTube

TOTAL

1

Harvard Bus Sch

67811

121678

32670

32436

254595

2

Stanford Univ GSB

113560

71662

8533

53797

247552

3

Univ of Pennsylvania - Wharton

63670

37285

18523

6070

125548

4

Univ of Virginia - Darden

14017

71850

11991

6012

103870

5

MIT Sloan Sch of Mgmt

40943

25061

7878

1237

75119

6

Univ of California at Berkeley - Haas

17917

18284

4446

7863

48510

7

Columbia Bus Sch

20462

14630

4773

7052

46917

8

Georgetown Univ - McDonough

39214

4843

879

297

45233

9

Northwestern Univ - Kellogg

22854

10958

7632

907

42351

10

Yale Sch of Mgmt

11327

20984

2298

1931

36540

11

Univ of Chicago - Booth

8416

18299

6316

1853

34884

12

UCLA - Anderson

5747

19946

3674

261

29628

13

New York Univ - Stern

11560

4860

5749

506

22675

14

Duke Univ - Fuqua

8244

7629

2210

4377

22460

15

Univ of Michigan - Ross

5955

10727

3690

929

21301

16

Univ of Texas at Austin - McCombs

10071

5567

3012

1075

19725

17

Univ of Southern California - Marshall

2871

9488

3970

1110

17439

18

Cornell Univ - Johnson

5934

5432

4972

367

16705

19

Dartmouth College - Tuck

9178

4407

1758

1225

16568

20

Indiana Univ - Kelley

8413

2626

3839

208

15086

21

Univ of North Carolina - Kenan-Flagler

6034

3695

2468

480

12677

22

Carnegie Mellon - Tepper

2071

4011

1797

2230

10109

23

Emory Univ - Goizueta

2029

5158

1640

178

9005

24

Vanderbilt Univ - Owen

2577

2506

203

84

5370

25

Wisconsin Sch of Bus

2040

1872

738

-

4650

In the ten years since Linkedin and Facebook were founded, many business schools have been slow to embrace social media, particularly in the way they market themselves. Though a growing number of institutions now include MBA classes on how to monetize social media and meet a demand for media-savvy employees, their own use of them still appears haphazard. Search YouTube for Columbia Business School, for example, and you’ll quickly find material ranging from student interviews to presentations from guest speakers. But users are more attracted to the offbeat: the official videos from the admissions office attract just a few hundred page views, while Every Breath You Take, a parody by Columbia students about the dean wanting Ben Bernanke’s job, has been viewed 2.5 million times.

With the potentially disruptive arrival of massive open online courses (MOOCs), business schools face further pressure to engage online. The Wharton School is the latest to commit course content online for free, announcing that a number of foundation courses from year one of the MBA program will be available through the Coursera platform. While MBA applicants are advised to review their own social media presence as part of the admissions process, what level of online engagement can they expect from the schools they aspire to enroll with?

Scores are based on overall reach, though this does not take into account the active participation of those that like, follow or subscribe. A strong case could also be made for the respective value of a YouTube subscriber consuming hours of video content versus a fan or follower elsewhere.

The University of Virginia’s Darden School performs particularly well on Facebook and ranks #3 on Linkedin. The school’s Dean, Bob Bruner, is leading by example, as one of the most active blogging business school deans. The Wharton School boasts a further 26,404 Twitter followers for its popular Knowledge@Wharton, the multi-language online business analysis journal that reaches millions of students and professionals each year.

But further down the table, a number of schools are struggling to attract an active following. Perhaps not surprising for one of the business schools in the survey, as they did not have any social media links from the home page of their website.

The survey was limited to the 25 US business schools that feature in the MBA50 Premiership, a composite ranking of the five major full-time MBA media rankings. There are schools beyond this group such as Babson and Notre Dame’s Mendoza whose social media reach would merit a place in the top 25.

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